Trivia for
Driving Miss Daisy (1989) More at IMDbPro »

• The role of Florine, played by Patti LuPone, is not in the original play "Driving Miss Daisy". It was written in by playwright and screenwriter Alfred Uhry specifically for LuPone, who, Uhry felt, looked good in a costume.
  
  
• Towards the end of the movie, viewers see that Boolie Werthan has put his mother's house for sale. The house is listed by Harry Norman Realtors, which is an actual real estate company in Atlanta, Georgia. It was started in the 1930s and is still in business today (1999) and operated by a descendant of Mrs. Harry Norman, the woman who founded the company.
  
  
• Author Alfred Uhry based the story of Daisy and Hoke on his own grandmother Lena Fox and her chauffeur Will Coleman.
  
  
• Jessica Tandy won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Daisy Werthan. At age 81, she is the oldest winner of a Best Actress Oscar.
  
  
• The Hans Zimmer score was done completely with synthesizers, all of which he played. No orchestras were used.
  
  
• In the scene where Miss Daisy gives Hoke a writing book as a gift she mentions to Hoke that she taught Mayor Hartsfield out of the same book. This is a reference to William B. Hartsfield (1890-1971) who was a six term mayor of Altanta from 1937-1961.
  
  
• So convinced was she that she would lose out, Jessica Tandy had a $100 bet with her agent that she wouldn't win the Oscar for Best Actress. When she paid up on Oscar night, she told him that it was the best bet she had ever lost.
  
  
• The aria heard in the azalea blossoms/time passes scene when Daisy is listening to the radio is "Song To The Moon" from Antonín Dvorák's "Rusalka".
  
  
• As of 2005, this is the last film with an MPAA PG-rating to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
  
  
• Three black men are seen crossing railroad tracks in Atlanta. All three of these men are descendants of the real Hoke.
  
  
• One of only three films to win the Oscar for best picture without also being nominated for best director. The other two are Wings (1927) and Grand Hotel (1932).
  
  
• Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Lucille Ball, and Angela Lansbury all were interested in playing Miss Daisy. Studio executives also considered a Bette Midler/Eddie Murphy pairing.
  
  
• In the scenes involving the black 4 door Cadillac sedan, the director uses both a 1955 and a 1956 Cadillac. The cars' exteriors are identical except for the rear exhaust fender flare on the '56. The rear fender on the '55 is flat.
  
  
• While being interviewed in the 2008 PBS Mini-Series "The Jewish Americans" (2008), Alfred Uhry, who wrote the film's screen play and grew up as a Jewish child in Atlanta during the 40's and 50's, admitted that many Jews in Atlanta celebrated Christmas like Boolie and his wife in attempt to be a part of a community where Jews where a minority.
  
  
• Alfred Uhry's 1987 play "Driving Miss Daisy," on which this movie is based, is the first of his "Atlanta Trilogy" of plays about Jews in Atlanta, Georgia. The other two plays are "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" (1996), a play about a family preparing for the Atlanta Jewish society cotillion, and "Parade" (1998), a musical about the false conviction and 1915 lynching of Atlanta factory manager Leo Frank.
  
  
• The play "Driving Miss Daisy" won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1988.
  
  
• The last film to date to win an Academy Award for Best Picture without also being nominated for Best Director.
  
  
• Second of only two Academy Award Best Picture winners to have been adapted for the screen from plays having won the Pulitzer Prize.
  
  

• SPOILER: Before Idella dies, she and Hoke are watching "The Edge of Night" (1956). During the period in which the movie is set, CBS aired "Edge" live at 4pm every day.
  
  

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